Free A Small Indiscretion by Jan Ellison Page A

didn’t want to risk losing that, or the camaraderie we had settled into, our bantering and our flirtation, our friendship. His devoted efforts to win me, not only by complimenting me often, and anticipating my needs, but by doling out more and more responsibility for the bid, and by giving me raise after raise and even a new title, “office manager,” which he had printed on thick white business cards. If I gave in to him, if we consummated our flirtation, our days together in the office would be changed. And if we went to bed together, I might not live up to the expectations that had been building in him all this time. I would be a disappointment, or worse, he would be, and I would have to pretend he was not.
    “Let me walk you up,” he’d say.
    “That’s all right.”
    “Are you certain?”
    “You’re married, Malcolm.”
    “So is my wife.”
    But he did not push me. He was a gentleman, and I loathed and admired him for it. He must have had no idea how easily I would have given in, if only he’d taken me in hand. Once, standing outside Victoria House in the cold, he told me that in a perfect world he would begin again with me. I would be the woman with whom he made a family. I knew for certain, at that moment, that I had been right to refuse him.
    And yet, as the weeks wore on, I imagined it unjust that at seven every night he left me to collect his wife. I imagined I was lonely in my blue room at Victoria House, and maybe I was lonely, but I also remember a singular happiness and relief returning there in the evenings as long as I had not had too much to drink. When I was drunk, I sometimes became indignant thinking of Malcolm abandoning me to make his way to the Horticultural Society to collect Louise and drive her home. Was Malcolm’s devotion the result of obligation or duty? Did he perceive Louise as a noose around his neck, or did he love her? Did he refuse to keep her waiting because he was afraid of her, or because he did not want to make her unhappy? I suspect it was the latter—he wanted her to be happy—and what is that, if not love?
    I wonder now, too, whether he wasn’t a little relieved to leave me at the end of the day. Perhaps Louise was relieved, too, when she found herself in her own bed, with Malcolm, instead of in the cottage with Patrick. Their arrangement was intoxicating, but it must have been burdensome, and wearing, too.

Eleven

    T HIS MORNING I WOKE to a silent house. I checked the girls’ rooms, first Polly’s, then Clara’s, and found them empty. Had they been taken from me in the night? Who would take them? Jonathan? Why would he take them when he has them half the time?
    I called out their names. Silence. I called again, growing frantic, opening and closing the front door, then the back. I had misplaced you, and now I was losing them, too.
    Then I heard them scream “April Fools!” and they threw the living room curtain from over their heads and emerged, squealing and beaming. They’d been hiding over the heating vent, impressively silent, sheltering themselves from the frigid spring morning.
    Later, Clara said, very seriously, “Can I tell you something?”
    “Yes,” I said, “tell me something.”
    “There are a lot of answers to one question.”
    “Which question?”
    “Well, like, what’s black and white and red all over?”
    “What is black and white and red all over?”
    “Well, a newspaper. That’s the easy answer.”
    “And what are the hard answers?”
    “A penguin in a blender,” Clara said.
    “Ooh. Ouch.”
    “A zebra with a sunburn,” she continued.
    “My goodness. What else?”
    “That’s all,” she said, and she reached out and hugged me around the waist. She’s begun to hug me differently than she used to. She doesn’t turn her face to the side but keeps it straight ahead, so that her nose is pushed directly into my belly.
    I leaned down and whispered: “Did you miss me when you were at Daddy’s?”
    “Not really,” she said.
    I